Chapter Three #3
He loved showing her the slow-paced pleasure of rural life.
He loved giving her chores, watching her confidence grow as she realized she was brave enough to both approach and feed the chickens.
Farm life wasn’t just good for him. It was good for everyone who came out and visited him.
April’s Farm—which David had renamed it upon purchasing—had a restorative and healing energy.
Even if he spent most of his time rehabbing the old property.
David ate way too much latkes and brisket that evening, before finally, the plates and dishes were cleaned up and put away, and it was time to light candles on the menorah.
The kids wasted no time gathering around the menorah, saying the prayers, the light of the candle flickering across their tiny faces, before racing off to decorate Hanukkah-shaped sugar cookies.
And periodically, David envisioned the family he might have had—two cousins playing happily during the holiday—if things had gone differently for him and Evelyn.
Evelyn was still hard at work when the hallway lights dimmed for evening hours.
In truth, she barely even noticed. She was too busy reviewing production notes, making sure every line item in her budget was accounted for .
. . Unfortunately, despite her best intentions to focus on work, her mind kept wandering back to David.
Freaking David. Like the holiday of Hanukkah, and that menorah sitting on her windowsill, she kept trying to forget about him.
It was no use. She sent out emails to Demi.
She called and emailed caroler number eighteen’s agent.
She made sure that every requirement listed on Jared Sparks’s contract had been completed, but she kept finding her thoughts drifting to their run-in earlier that day.
It was so unfair that her ex-husband had returned to her life, that he had the audacity to smell so good and look so unbelievably handsome.
She was still stewing over his perfectly fit forearms, and in the middle of an email, when she heard music playing.
She stopped typing, craning one ear to listen.
It sounded like Hanukkah music, a mixture of violin and strings in G-sharp.
At first, she decided to pay it no mind, reasoning that another colleague was working late.
But after a few minutes, the music got louder.
The migraine she had been dealing with all day worsened.
“Excuse me,” she called out from her office. “Whoever is playing music out there, can you please turn that down?”
She waited for a response. But the music only got louder. Perhaps the person blasting holiday tunes couldn’t hear her. This time, she rose fully from her seat, trying again. “Excuse me?” she said, heading toward the door. “But someone is still working in here. Would you mind . . .”
The music erupted, causing her to cower and put both hands on her ears.
Evelyn had had enough.
“Excuse me,” she said, stepping into the hallway and threading her way through the fourth-floor cubicles. “The entire building is empty! Take it to another floor!”
Her feet came to a sudden stop. She cocked her head, confused, squinting at the strange woman lingering at the end of the hallway.
Her back turned toward Evelyn, she had a polished coif of silver hair, and was wearing a stylish silver frock.
In her hands above her head, she was holding a fifteen-inch tablet that played music, blasting it at full volume.
Weird.
And then, Evelyn’s eyes wandered down to the old woman’s belt.
Six different types of cell phones dangled from her waist, all on and ringing in unison.
As if the burden of all that weight wasn’t enough, two laptop bags were slung over her shoulders .
. . and a desktop monitor was attached to her ankle by a chain.
Super weird.
Evelyn’s mind struggled to make sense of what was standing before her.
It was just an old woman, who, for some reason, was physically imprisoned by technology.
Clearly, there was a logical explanation.
She was an actress, practicing for some role.
Or maybe she was a fellow television professional, in the midst of some sort of mental health crisis.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Either way, there had to be a logical explanation.
Beginning to approach slowly, Evelyn removed her hands from her ears. “Excuse me?”
The woman didn’t answer.
She tried again. “Do you need some help?”
The woman was oblivious, and with each step closer to the figure, Evelyn was growing more nervous.
Something about the entire scene—from the ethereal clothing the woman wore to the plethora of gadgets attached to her—felt all types of wrong.
She was only inches away from tapping the woman on the shoulder when she pulled her hand back.
She must be dreaming. That was the answer.
Clearly, she had fallen asleep at her desk, and this person she was seeing in the hall was nothing more than a nightmare.
An outlandishly lucid dream, brought on by a face-plant with a piano, chronic migraines and the fact that she had lived, eaten and slept nothing but A Christmas Carol for the last six weeks straight.
She just needed to wake up. She just needed to will herself awake and get away from this sleep demon. She closed her eyes and told her brain to obey. But even as she was thinking it, she could hear that woman turning around slowly in her spot.
“Evelyn,” the old lady whispered. “I’m here for you.”
“Oh, hell no!” Evelyn said, and closed her eyes tighter.
“Open your eyes, Evelyn.”
Evelyn was ready to nope right out of this nightmare.
She dug her nails into her palms, hopeful that the pain would jar her from her slumber.
And then Evelyn smelled something familiar.
She wriggled her nose, sucking it back. It was a perfume, one she recognized called La Naissance, because it was the only scent that her old boss, Marla Feinberg, had ever worn.
The picture grew clearer in her mind. The perfume.
The hair. The stylish silver frock. Slowly, Evelyn opened one eye.
Marla Feinberg beamed back at her. “Boo.”
Evelyn screamed, and then sprinted back to her office.
Slamming the door behind her, she locked it, before reaching with one foot for the cabinet at the side.
It was no use. The cabinet was too far away, and Evelyn was too afraid of letting go of the handle, in order to drag it over.
She settled on pressing her back to the door, when a sharp pain blazed behind her eyes, causing her to wince.
It couldn’t be real. She couldn’t be possible.
Marla Feinberg had been dead for four years.